Umbral moonshine (Q481149)

Moonshine means a mysterious phenomenon involving finite groups, modular forms and other algebraic structures such as vertex algebras, generalized Kac-Moody Lie algebras, etc. It is also connected to conformal field theory and string theory. The first example is the monstrous moonshine for the monster simple group \(\mathbb{M}\), which was conjectured by \textit{J. H. Conway} and \textit{S. P. Norton} [Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 11, 308--339 (1979; Zbl 0424.20010)], and \textit{J. G. Thompson} [Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 11, 352--353 (1979; Zbl 0425.20016); ibid. 11, 347--351 (1979; Zbl 0424.20011)]. The monstrous moonshine says that there is an infinite dimensional \(\mathbb{Z}\)-graded vector space \(V = \oplus_{m \geq -1} V_m\) such that for each \(g \in \mathbb{M}\) the graded trace function \(T_g(\tau) = \sum_m \mathrm{tr}_{V_m}(g) q^m\) is a Hauptmodul for some genus zero group \(\Gamma_g \subset \mathrm{PSL}_(2,\mathbb{R})\). A \(\mathbb{Z}\)-graded vector space \(V^\natural\) on which \(\mathbb{M}\) acts was constructed by \textit{I. Frenkel} et al. in [Vertex operator algebras and the monster. Pure and Applied Mathematics, 134. Boston etc.: Academic Press, Inc. (1988; Zbl 0674.17001)] and the monstrous moonshine was proved by \textit{R. E. Borcherds} [Invent. Math. 109, No. 2, 405--444 (1992; Zbl 0799.17014)]. Another moonshine phenomenon was discovered by \textit{T. Eguchi} et al. [Exp. Math. 20, No. 1, 91--96 (2011; Zbl 1266.58008)] for the Mathieu \(M_{24}\) in connection with the elliptic genus of \(K_3\) surfaces. In the paper under review the authors generalize the work of Eguchi, Ooguri and Tachikawa [loc. cit.] and discuss analogous phenomena for six groups \(G^{(\ell)}\), \(\ell \in \{ 2,3,4,5,7,13 \}\); the set of integers such that \(\ell -1\) is a divisor of \(12\). Those groups are \(M_{24}\), \(2.M_{12}\), \(2.A\mathrm{GL}_3(2)\), \(\mathrm{GL}_2(5)/2\), \(\mathrm{SL}_2(3)\) and cyclic group of order \(4\), respectively, where \(2.G\) is a non-split central extension of a group \(G\) by a group of order \(2\). One of the main results (Theorem 2.2) is that the dimension of the space of extremal weak Jacobi forms \(J_{0,m-1}^{\mathrm{ext}}\) of weight \(0\) and index \(m-1\) for a positive integer \(m\) is \(1\) or \(0\) according as \(m-1\) divides \(12\) or not. Many conjectures are presented. In Conjecture 5.1, the authors conjecture that for \(\ell \in \{ 2,3,4,5,7,13 \}\) there exists a \(\mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Q}\)-graded \(G^{(\ell)}\)-module \(K^{(\ell)}\) whose graded trace function for each \(g \in G^{(\ell)}\) recovers the vector-valued mock modular forms \(H_{g,r}^{(\ell)}(\tau)\). In Conjecture 5.4 (Umbral moonshine conjecture) it is conjectured that for each \(\ell \in \{ 2,3,4,5,7,13 \}\) and \(g \in G^{(\ell)}\) the vector-valued mock modular forms \(H_g^{(\ell)} = (H_{g,r}^{(\ell)})\) coincides with a certain vector-valued generalization of the Rademacher sum. The term ``Umbral'' is used because mock modular forms require shadows.